Little Glass Houses
Chapter Sixteen: Sunday Plans
Percy was holding a plate of samples of small, expensive sponge cakes. Each fluffy sample had more colours than Devon's 1992 gay parade. Beside him, Molly, Ginny and Penelope had already gone through their cake samples. Their soft, round faces were smeared with icing sugar and lined with cake crumbs. There were pink-and-purple lippy marks on napkins everywhere. Whenever Percy looked, there was a massacre of pastel colours and hundreds and thousands scattered beyond his eyes could see.
"Free cakes," George said in excitement as he joined them. "Finally. Something to get out of bed for!"
"Lazy arse," Ron commented. "It's noon." Like he wouldn't be asleep at this time if he didn't have to be up.
George laughed. "So?" Angelina didn't wake up before three most days. Percy remembered Penelope telling him that titbit of information. She was appalled by it almost. "Like you wouldn't be caught in bed past noon if you didn't have your girlfriend waking you up when the clock hits eight!" Ron flushed. "Oh, Perce! I didn't see you there!"
George eyed him up and down and Percy felt himself stiffen. "You look…" he shrugged. "Relaxed I guess."
"Um… hello," Percy replied back weakly. He felt so unnatural, standing there in the middle of the kerfuffle.
Charlie scoffed. "You haven't seen a six-foot bloke wearing a yellow jacket?" he asked George. "And relaxed my arse. He's been biting his nails for the last half hour and staring at the cake sample like they were boggarts coming to life before his very eyes." He laughed, but Percy felt his hands go clammier.
"Look, he was standing next to his girlfriend, who's wearing a neon orange dress and ten layers of makeup! With the way she looks, I'm surprised I could bloody see at all!" George frowned. "No offence, Perce."
"It's alright," Percy was sweating in the hot June weather. He didn't really like summer.
He was given another plate by Ginny, who squealed, "This is amazing! Penelope and I really like it."
"T-thank you. Yes, I do like cake," Percy looked down at the plate. It had a spiced sponge with a seeded vanilla cream and dehydrated strawberry bits in it. It was a poor effort at a Victoria's sponge, which he hated anyway. He felt very lost in this bakery, which smelled sickly-sweet and felt unwelcoming, even with its velvet carpets and luxurious royal blue couches. "Is there a way to…err, have these? Does anyone know?"
Bill nodded. "Yes, you should scoff your lot before George gets to them." He turned to George, who was cramming samples into his mouth at breakneck speed. A very stressed-out looking clerk had shooed him away. "Here," Bill handed him another plate of a pale cake with chocolate shavings. "This is great too. Really full of chocolate flavour!" Percy was up to his chest with plates of cake samples.
Percy put the plates down. "I suppose," he picked up a spoon and started eating bits of cake from the side.
"Perce, this is your wedding cake!" Charlie reminded him. Percy's appetite dropped the second that he'd heard the word wedding, not that he had much to begin with. "You could look a little more excited about it."
"Sorry," he responded awkwardly, his blush extending to his ears. "I'll-I'll just take these to—"
"Percy, it's a cake tasting, not a court hearing," Arthur chuckled. "Hey," he recognised the look on his face "Relax." Arthur had eaten his way through his lot, leaving clumps of thick, congealed icing on his new robes. "All you have to do is try them," his light blue eyes were twinkling with amusement. "And then pick out your favourite." He gestured to the piles of used wrappers. "That's just all there is to it."
Percy was sweating through his canary-yellow jacket, which hid an infected forearm wound. When he swallowed, he could taste the bitterness of his coffee that morning. "Yes, I know. It's just—"
"Come on," Arthur smiled at him. "Come with me."
He led him to one of the couches there. They sat beside each other. Percy spread his plates on the table. It looked so daunting. Across from them was a dotting couple that looked like they were going to be divorced the second that the honeymoon was over. He had seen them in the shops too, for their dress robe fitting. He'd seen them arguing about the dresses and looking for the most expensive dress robes. In Twilfitt and Tattings, where every robe cost as much as two or three wands!
Arthur cleared his throat. "Your mum won't tell you but she's worried about you," he whispered. "It feels like you're getting more and more secluded every time that we see you."
Percy didn't know what to say to that, so he just stayed quiet.
His father watched him as he arranged the cakes on his plate. "Kingsley is even more worried," Percy clutched his spoon a little tighter. "He says you barely turn up to work! He's this close to firing you. I was…" he took a moment to compose himself. "I'm really shocked, Percy. Really, really shocked. You're not the kind to…honestly, the fact that you don't even bother turning up…it seems to me like a real cry for help."
He stared at the spoon in his hand. Thick, cold, metallic. Unremarkable. "Why?" Percy asked calmly.
"Because-because your job means everything to you," Arthur reminded him.
"No, it doesn't," nothing really mattered to Percy most days. "Not anymore."
"I know that's supposed to please me, but it just worries me," Arthur admitted, crossing his arms over his chest. Percy supposed that because even normal people cared if they were going to be fired. "Besides, I don't know if you know who you are if you're not working. I think…I think there's something—"
"I'm alright," Percy replied calmly. He felt like the more that he said it, the more Arthur didn't believe him.
"I suppose," Arthur replied. "You can tell me anything that's been going on with you."
Percy nodded his head. After a few minutes of thinking about colourful paper cups—like the kind they used on cupcakes that soaked up oil and became transparent, he said, "I…I don't like cake tastings."
"That's not it," Arthur replied. "At least…at least it's not the only thing." He was smiling rather awkwardly.
He took a bite of everything on his plates, but Percy could barely taste any of it. Even when he tried to focus on the taste, all he could taste was cream-cream-cream, which he absolutely despised.
"Well, if it helps, I quite like that-that red one," Arthur said, when Percy had taken a mouthful of it.
"Really? That thing is like a rock," George commented, as he walked towards them. He grabbed Percy's leftovers. George loved cream. He remembered that he and Fred used to scoop the cream off their mum's puffs. They would eat until they were sick, and spend the whole night, cream-faced and ill.
"You've still polished it off," Bill commented. They'd started overcrowding the little couch that he'd been sat on. "I think mum and Penny like that pink one." He pointed towards a cake sample that Percy thought little of.
"Maybe if they were using it as a facial elixir," Arthur replied. Percy tore off a bit of 'that pink thing'. It smelled floral. He ate it slowly, lavender and rose. "It tastes like a soapy bath with flowers and…other feminine things in it. You shouldn't be eating that." He supposed it was alright. "It's barely edible."
"You still ate it," George reminded him. Arthur just shrugged.
"Verdict, Perce?" Charlie and Ron had joined in now, and they were just eating mounds of chocolate cake.
Percy looked down at the spread before him. He must have tried about thirty odd cake samples, and they all tasted exactly the same to him. "I…I think I'd rather have a reduced-price chocolate tart from Honeyduke's."
George started choking on the sample that he was eating. "Percy!" he started laughing. "You're joking!"
Percy didn't do so well with people looking at him. He didn't like the attention. It was hard to imagine that there was time where he was begging for it because it was just so overwhelming. "I… I suppose that I am."
The silence that came afterwards was so wonderful. It didn't feel forced, and it was a rare, golden moment in his family for a silence like that to be so normal.
The afternoon ended with them going away with a delicate raspberry cake, which Percy could barely afford.
The wedding had just become a series of payments and transactions, gloom and doom, like waiting for a war to happen. And waiting for it to happen was so exhausting. Every thought, every moment of his day, was preoccupied with this wedding that just wouldn't go away.
By the time that they ended up home, Percy immediately changed into a fresh pair of pyjamas.
The feeling of the oversized cotton on his achy muscles felt so good. The taste of an old vial of Dreamless Sleep was familiar and comforting. His empty bed felt more home-like than the Burrow. He felt so comfortable, lying under his thick white duvet. He had taken out a couple of coloured papers, which he kept for special occasions although he wasn't 100% sure what constituted as a special occasion most days.
As he made tiny paper cranes, he started to see more clearly. The walls were a gorgeous baby blue. He remembered when he'd first put that fresh coat of paint on three years back—he swore that he could smell that lovely paint smell it for days. He could remember her hand on his skin, rubbing away oils until the stiffness disappeared, and all the pain just ebbed away. He could even remember how her breath felt on his neck, hot and slow, as he drifted off to sleep and felt that indescribable feeling of not being alone, of things being alright because you were not alone.
How did that make much sense for a bloke whose greatest pleasures in life had been reduced to paper cranes?
"Percy?" Arthur's voice made Percy snap out of his daydream. He looked up from his half-made paper crane. There must be six or seven orange ones in front of him, but he couldn't really remember making them. "It's two in the afternoon," he reminded him, as if he didn't know (he didn't for the record). "Don't you want to have lunch?"
"Penny made toasties," George was staring at the cranes. Percy's mind echoed Penny, Penny, Penny. Since when had Penelope become Penny to everyone? "Lucky bastard. Ange burns water."
Lucky, he repeated in his mind. "N-no, thank you," Percy just wanted his potion to work so he could sleep.
George sat down on the bed, without asking. The squeaky sound kept ringing into Percy's ears. "You're rather good at this—whatever this is," he picked up a paper crane to look at. Not that there was much to look at. Percy nodded his head slowly.
"Mum and I are going to visit Fred tomorrow," George suddenly mentioned. "In the morning."
Percy hadn't ever seen Fred's grave. Up until now, he didn't feel like he was convinced that Fred was gone.
"We all go every Sunday. We thought that maybe you'd want to…" George straightened his back. "It's Fred."
"Yes, well…" Arthur rubbed his neck awkwardly. Everyone did everything awkwardly around him, like they weren't sure if they were allowed to relax around him. It hurt him. Made him feel like he was someone they were scared of upsetting or hurting. "You might feel better if you get to see him."
"I'm not angry," George brought up. "About you not seeing him until now." Percy hadn't even thought about that, but now he was, now it was all he could think of. "I don't know what's going on with you, Perce. Nobody does, but…but it has to be something, doesn't it? And you don't have to tell us. Because I feel like…like I mucked up so badly that you might not want to tell me." Tell him what? Percy thought.
"I'm sorry." George's voice cracked. "About how I treated you before. It was…it was horrible."
"It's okay," Percy replied. He didn't know what George was sorry for, but he felt like he needed to hear his apology somehow. He felt better knowing that George was sorry, even if he didn't know what it was for.
George smiled weakly at him. "So, you'll come?" he asked. "With us to see Fred?"
"Fred?" Percy repeated. George nodded his head.
"Yes," George beamed at him. "Come on, Perce. You can't act like you don't remember the other strapping fellow that followed me around—obsessed with me." He was smiling but his smile hurt to look at it. All that Percy felt was pain. See Fred. As if he wasn't just a headstone along with a plot of dirt. As if they were really going to see that shiny toothy smile and those big, brown eyes. As if they were going to be able to drag him down from that debris, that heaving stone that Percy was still suffocating underneath-
"Oh," Percy felt tears suddenly tug at the corners of his eyes. His voice cracked. "Fred."
Fred was gone, and the realisation just really hit him for the first time since the war was over. He wasn't ever going to see him again.
"Yeah, Perce," George seemed to understand somehow. How did he? He had the right feelings at the right times. Nobody broke down a year after they heard the news of their brother's death. "He's gone."
Percy's mouth hung open. "Fred," he repeated. Suddenly, all he could smell was that blood. All he could see was Fred, dying before him again and again. Why couldn't he stop it? It was a war. You should always anticipate a death during a war. Why had he distracted him? "I…I…" he couldn't be responsible for Fred too. His heart might split into half. He killed Fred. He knew it deep down. He had killed him too.
George rubbed his shoulder. "It's okay," he said quietly. "We can go see him on Sunday."
"I can't," Percy's voice broke. "You don't understand what I've done. You don't understand—"
"He spends Sunday with me," Penelope's voice sounded out from the doorway. Molly and Ginny were beside her and they were holding plates of toasties. If Percy knew her well enough, he'd have guessed they were cheese and tomato toasties. "Every Sunday."
Percy nodded his head. "Every Sunday," he whispered. George stared at him like he was mad.
Molly looked surprised. "It'll just be for the morning," she smoothly replied. "And then we can—"
"Sunday is for Peter," Percy's voice was so low he hadn't even caught what he said.
"Sunday is for Peter," Penelope's voice was loud and proud. Percy's head felt heavier. A photograph in a copy of Prefects Who Gained Power. A spritz of white lily perfume. A bouquet of white flowers. Death flowering everywhere he saw.
The room lapsed into a sudden silence. Fred, Peter, Peter, Fred. It was hard to remember they weren't just names. It was hard to even fathom. Hard for Percy to believe that one person could feel so much pain.
"Perce?" George looked at him as if he were waiting for him to explain.
"Sunday is for Peter," Percy reiterated, closing his eyes as tightly as he could.
"TELL THEM!" she sounded out loudly, and he flinched. His heart raced in his chest, and he felt sweat pooling into his hand. Ginny flinched, knocking a row of toasties down onto the ground. "What is Sunday for Percy? Because I can't hear you."
Percy wondered where he kept the dustpan. "Perce, it's okay," he heard George tell him, softly, but he didn't feel calm.
"Merlin, you're a spineless coward!" Penelope cried out desperately. Seconds after, Percy found himself suddenly beside her, though he could barely remember getting up from the bed, barely feel the audience around him as he brought himself closer to her. She was crying, tears running down her face. "TELL THEM!"
"Don't talk to him like that!" George sounded angry. "Don't ever talk to him like that."
There was an emptiness that they shared between them that second. "Sunday is for Peter," Percy said, clearly, loudly. His whole face felt like it had gone numb.
Penelope looked down at her feet. "Good," she said. "So, everyone knows…" she nodded.
"Everyone," she sounded vacant.
Percy nodded his head. "Everyone knows," he whispered, though he wasn't sure what that meant.
There was no explanation coming their way, even when Penelope had left, claiming a headache. Ten minutes afterwards, he heard the sound of the water coming from the shower. There was a tension in the air, the tension that came with a topic that nobody wanted to bring up.
"She had no right to talk to you like that," George suddenly brought up. "Like you're less than human."
Percy looked at him with a softened expression, and if he would've chosen to tell them, maybe that was the right time. But he was waiting for his potion to work and he just wanted to sleep this away. Whatever this was, it was heavy and cold, and had been sitting in his stomach for years. "I would like to sleep."
A moment of silence, heavy and unsettling, like this feeling in him.
What would you have said? What was the right thing to say? If there was one right thing to say…
"That's the only thing you've said you wanted to do," George scoffed. "You don't want to go to a cake tasting. You don't want to eat. You don't want to work. You don't want to go to see your dead brother's grave for the first time in a year. Actually, Perce, I think you don't want to see anyone, but you want to sleep your day away." A pointless existence it seemed like, but he didn't want to die. How could that make sense? How could someone want to be asleep but still want to live? "It's sad. To see what you've turned into."
George cocked his head. "Why won't you change? Are you really scared of her?" he asked.
"George," Arthur stood up. Ginny and Molly looked almost paralysed with what happened. "Maybe we should just leave them alone. I think…I believe that we've overstayed our welcome for now."
"I take back what I said," George suddenly decided. "She'll let you visit her brother's grave, but she won't let you come see yours?" he snorted. "And you're letting her? You're letting her?"
George had tears running down his eyes. "Our brother and you—"
Percy pulled George's chin up so that he was staring straight into his eyes. It immediately shut him up. Percy felt his heart pounding into his chest, felt like George could hear it too somehow. George's eyes were hard, brown, shining with tears. Nothing like Fred's. Never anything like Fred's, not for a single day.
"Shh," Percy gestured with a hand. George stayed quiet but stared at him. "Peter isn't her brother," he whispered into George's ear. "Peter is my son." He didn't feel any better saying it to anyone like he thought that he would. He thought that, maybe it didn't have to be this unspoken thing inside of his head anymore, but it still felt very much in his head. The weight of it was pulling him down, like he was crushed by his little body. "Do you understand?" Percy asked him quietly.
George, stunned, just kept his eyes on his face, as if he was seeing Percy for the first time. "Sunday's are for Peter," he finally said. Percy nodded his head. "I… Merlin… why-why didn't you—"
"Percy, what's going on?" Arthur suddenly asked. George just nodded his head.
"Cut it out," Ginny walked towards him, placing a hand on Percy's arm. He was tired of people touching him. Her eyes were on Percy's face, like she was trying to read him. She'd witnessed Penelope's Christmas debacle, and had seemed to have recovered from it but she didn't look like she was getting over this. "Percy."
"Please," was all he could say. "I'd…I'd like to sleep now."
"Perce—" George's voice got cut off when Arthur placed a hand on his shoulder and said, "Let's go."
He went to sleep the second that they left. When he closed his eyes, he could hear the ticking of a clock that had broken a long time ago.
Then he woke up, and he was suffocating under the smell of perfume and Penelope's body on top of his. He looked down, seeing his clothing torn onto the ground, a thousand paper cranes all over the floor, her underpants and felt an indescribable pain consume him. Had she…? He couldn't remember. He'd been asleep. Percy closed his eyes, bit back his lip so that he couldn't cry. He stared at the ceiling, afraid to move, feeling the shape of her, the softness of her skin, and then felt the ache of loss fill him for the longest time.